BY THEME:

The following Video Clips have Study Modules suitable for English Year 11.

To access a Video Clip, click on the Study Module link below it.

Aboriginal People in the Gibson Desert (1966)In 1966 a few Aboriginal families were living nomadic lives in the heart of Australia’s Gibson Desert. Women would collect seeds from Woolybuck grass to make bread whilst their husbands searched for old spearheads and tools for hunting.

Australian Biography – Sir Marcus Oliphant (1991)The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Sir Mark Oliphant helped to create the bomb, but even though it ended the war he can never reconcile himself to the loss of civilian life.

Closing Day at BHP’s Newcastle Steelworks (2000)Two thousand steelworkers collect their final paychecks and walk out of Newcastle’s BHP steelworks for the last time. Men break down and cry. Many have laboured here all their working lives.

Death of a Workman In A Streeton Painting (1984)Streeton’s eyewitness account of the death of a workman during the blasting of a railway tunnel at Lapstone in the NSW Blue Mountains. It becomes the inspiration for his painting “Fire’s on, Lapstone Tunnel”.

Indigenous Business – A Cattle Station (1973)The Yugal Cattle Co was given a grant of $336,000 to go into business running a cattle station. Their dreams of making money from cattle and beef export are big but there are problems. Traditional Indigenous laws are different from white man’s law.

A Land of Milk and Honey and English Lessons (1951)Australia needs new migrants to populate the country and build a more prosperous nation. English lessons are available everywhere, including through correspondence and radio courses.

Old Age and the Burden of Dementia (1983)An elderly woman confides to a social worker the lonely burden she faces looking after her dementia-affected husband. She doesn’t want to worry their children, who have their own lives to lead.

Peter Sculthorpe Composes (1999)Peter Sculthorpe wants to create a perfect work of art. He created “Irkanda One for Violin” by tracing the landscape around Canberra on a 360 degree graph, then wrote music to follow the contours.

Return to the Thai-Burma Railway (1987)Weary Dunlop and his elderly comrades return to the site of the Thai-Burma railway. As prisoners of war they each had to dig three cubic metres of earth a day, virtually with their bare hands.